More Does Not Equal Better

Reading the articles on attention, productivity, and instant gratification bring to mind the effects of burgeoning technology that I feel are negative.

For example, in the article from The New York Times, Levitin states that, "According to a 2011 study, on a typical day, we take in the equivalent of about 174 newspapers’ worth of information". I imagine a person reading a HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FOUR newspapers and wonder what, if any, percentage of that information they would be able to retain and recall.

So, is more really better? 

Poole states, "Productivity, of course, is the religion of an age that conceives of itself as accelerating, though in our time it is usually defined in a philistine way, as consisting of sheer volume rather than quality of work output." This is exactly how I feel about the "information-age" culture. We think of ourselves as "Smarter Faster Better" simply based on quantity rather than quantity. Simply put, more does not equal better; the quality is inherently diluted.

This self-importance, thinking of ourselves as "Smarter Faster Better", or at the very least, earnestly striving to be so, is what leads to a culture that is more concerned with feeling better rather than being better. 

This relates to the Fortune article on millennials taking less money for "higher quality of work-life". This can be seen two different ways, as can anything. An optimist would say that it is a positive thing that young people care less about money, which is a fabrication of society, and more about affecting positive social change. However, it is also a symptom of a culture that has, as said before, come to be more concerned with people's feelings instead of achievement and striving for excellence.

Many of the immigrants that came to the United States in the past few centuries, did so in order to escape a situation where they were not free to pursue the things that, because of our liberties, we now take for granted. They worked in order to put food on the table and a roof over the head. The money was the outcome of the work. So, needless to say, when great men and women build a country where, for a greater majority than most of the world, food and shelter are readily available, the mere opportunity of work for money is taken for granted and people begin to want work that "more closely aligns with their values or passions or improves their work-life balance"(Chew), forsaking money in the process. This is a far cry from the people who built this country, doing whatever was necessary to make money so they could put food on the table, stay in this land, and avoid going back to a worse place.

Because things are easier, the opportunities and luxuries we have a taken for granted, as well as the work required to attain them, and we become obsessed with ourselves, and how we feel about things, and forsake the pursuit of excellence in the process. More does not equal better.